The Bank of England has reached out to market participants to understand the details behind loans to UK data center projects that do not have any tenants.

Bloomberg reports that the central bank is more broadly seeking to understand lending in the data center industry, where project costs have ballooned as facility scale has expanded.

The questions are not due to an inherent negative view of the practice of speculative lending, but the bank is looking to understand the level of risk present in the sector.

The BOE has also been examining the interdependence of data center financing over the past year.

The bank's Financial Policy Committee warned last month that AI-linked investments’ “increasing leverage, opacity and, at times, ‘circular arrangements’ that can be associated with this financing could complicate the assessment of risks and could amplify losses if expectations disappointed.”

The international financial institute the Bank for International Settlements has also warned that the poor disclosure of deal terms means that the same data center asset may be repeatedly pledged.